By Haddon Libby
My cell phone (and most likely yours) recently began emitting ear-splitting emergency notices.
For me, it first happened at the beginning of August for an Amber Alert on Hannah Anderson. I wasn’t near my phone at the time of the message so I didn’t hear the screech. When I saw the message, I liked that we could all keep our eyes open for an abducted child.
Last week, my cell phone alerted me two more times. The first was for potential flash flooding as I drove down the 10 freeway passing Cabazon. I’m surprised one of the drivers didn’t plow into the rest of us as the noise was distracting and scary. While we did get a few drops of rain, there was no flooding.
It next went off last weekend for a local wind storm. I honestly thought the ‘big one’ earthquake was here or possible a nuclear blast. The phone sat right next to me in a silent house. As much as I tried, I couldn’t shut the damned alert off.
By the third notification (where we actually had flash flooding), I had gotten ‘smart’ and turned off the alert system. It’s not that I didn’t want to know about these emergencies – it’s just that they were so loud and invasive. There is no vibrate setting – only the screech setting. I’m surprised the warnings haven’t caused calls to 911 from people having heart attacks.
This Wireless Emergency Alert system was created in response to 9/11 as government wanted to have a way to send alerts to you and me. They chose to use cell broadcast towers as the way to get information to us without delay. The system was turned on last year although government authorities only just began using the service. Most phones made from 2012 on have emergency alert software programmed in.
Going forward, we get these emergency notifications for Amber Alerts, FEMA, the FCC, the Department of Homeland Security, local and state agencies, the National Weather Service and the Office of the President. Here in California, government is developing a system that may be able to give us a 10 second alert before an earthquake hits.
With so many agencies having a new toy like this, the system is likely to be overused. Can’t the alert system have different sound levels depending on the type of alert? I don’t need to go half deaf every time the wind blows hard.
The real problem is that people will be like me and turn off the notice system because it is just too loud, overused, wakes the baby, interrupts their sleep, disrupts a school exam, scares them, etc. Looking at the four announcements sent to me this month, none warranted the screech that urged me to drop everything that second. While the Amber Alert was important, I’m grateful I don’t live in Los Angeles where you might get a few of these a week.
This is why the system needs to have more than just the heart stopping shriek. For most alerts, a lower decibel unique sound or ping would be more than adequate.
Note: If there are times when you do not want to be disturbed no matter the emergency, you can opt out of the system. On an iPhone, tap on the settings icon, scroll down and tap the notifications icon and then scroll to the bottom and government alerts. It is there that you can turn on or off the alerts.
Other phones such as Androids have different ways to turn off the notices such as a text message or responding to the alert with the word Cancel, Stop or Unsubscribe.
